Champions League all-time top scorers: Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski add to tallies

This week Robert Lewandowski became only the seventh player in history to score 50 goals in the Champions League/European Cup.

The Polish Bayern Munich striker grabbed a brace in his side’s 5-1 thrashing of Benfica on Tuesday, the first of which took him to 50.

And his second goal put him ahead of Arsenal legend Thierry Henry into sixth place in the all-time standings - with the Monaco manager's week getting worse when his side lost 2-0 to Atletico Madrid the following day.

With Cristiano Ronaldo drawing a blank against Valencia, Lionel Messi reduced the gap between first and second to 15 goals with a brilliant strike in Barcelona’s 2-1 away to PSV Eindhoven.

Messi, despite being two years younger than Ronaldo, was actually the first man to overtake Raul’s previous record of 71 goals, when he scored a hat-trick against APOEL back in November 2014.

Champions League all-time top scorers: Robert Lewandowski is up to sixth (Pic: GETTY)

At the time Ronaldo was four goals behind the Argentinian, but in the four years since he has stormed ahead by adding 51 more goals to his tally, while Messi has ‘slowed down’ and ‘only’ scored 32 in that time.

Karim Benzema is perhaps a surprising name to be in fourth position in the charts - 12 strikes behind Raul - but the French striker failed to add to his tally in Real’s 2-0 win over Roma on Tuesday.

The rest of the top 10 is littered with legends, with Ruud van Nistelrooy the next man in Lewandowski’s sights on 56.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is on 48 goals, level with fellow AC Milan icon Andriy Shevchenko and two ahead of another San Siro favourite in Filippo Inzaghi.

With rumours abound that the Swede could return to Italy to join the Rossoneri from LA Galaxy in January, it is not impossible that he could yet add to his tally next season, if Milan qualify.